Two tools, two philosophies
On paper, BenchLab and Pointerpro look alike: with both, a participant completes a questionnaire and then receives a personal report. Yet they are fundamentally different products. Pointerpro is assessment software: you build an assessment or scan yourself, set up the scoring rules and the PDF template yourself, and everything happens in their environment. BenchLab is benchmark software, born in research practice: the comparison of every participant with the rest of the participant group is the core, and the personal benchmark report per respondent comes as standard.
Put differently: Pointerpro is a toolkit for building scans yourself, BenchLab is a toolkit for true benchmark research. Which of the two you need depends on what the participant should get back: a score against a self-devised standard, or an honest comparison with similar organisations.
Where Pointerpro excels
Credit where credit is due: Pointerpro is a mature product with a clear strength. If you want to build a marketing scan, self-assessment or maturity assessment yourself, you will find plenty of templates, flexible scoring formulas and integrations with other software. Especially for consultants who want to put a scan on their own website as a lead magnet, it is a proven formula: visitor completes it, receives an automatic PDF, consultant has a lead.
The flip side of all that freedom is that the quality depends entirely on you. You determine the questions, you build the report, you take care of participants. The comparison with others is moreover limited to the scores and standards you set up yourself: a true benchmark based on the participant group itself requires considerably more workarounds.
Where BenchLab makes the difference
BenchLab was built for serious benchmark research, and you notice that in three areas. First, the benchmark itself: every participant is compared with the actual answers of similar organisations in the study, not with a predefined standard. Second, the report: a full-fledged, multi-page benchmark report in your brand style, with charts and a conclusion per respondent, available immediately after completion.
Third, and in practice this is often the deciding factor: BenchLab integrates with all major research packages. So you do not need to move your entire research environment, as with Pointerpro, where everything has to be built in their platform. You keep the survey tool you know, and BenchLab handles the benchmark and the personal reports on top. Your study is usually ready within 48 hours.
The prices side by side
Pointerpro works with annual subscriptions in tiered packages. The entry price looks friendly, but the features that matter here, especially the automatic personal PDF reports, are in the more expensive packages according to their own site. So for serious use, count on several hundred euros per month, plus your own build time.
BenchLab starts at €99 per month, and the personal benchmark report per respondent comes as standard, as does the brand style layout. You build the report once in the report builder, after which it is automatically ready for every respondent. If your research grows, the packages grow with it, so you only pay for what you actually use.
How to choose
Choose Pointerpro if you want to build things yourself and enjoy doing so: a marketing scan on your website, a self-assessment for your workshops, full control over every detail, and you have the time to set it up properly.
Choose BenchLab if the research itself is the product: a customer study or member study in which participants compare themselves with each other, a benchmark your agency or association wants to repeat annually, or a study you use as a consultancy to get a seat at the table with new clients. If in doubt, complete our demo survey: within ten minutes you will experience for yourself what a participant gets back with BenchLab, and that compares far more concretely than a feature list.
Further reading
Want to experience the difference yourself?
Complete the demo survey and receive a personal benchmark report right away, or schedule a demo in which we set your situation against both tools. Honest advice, even if the outcome is Pointerpro.